god v aliens

[willow27]

do aliens exist, cause it occurred to me the other day that if they do then that totally rules out the theory of god because in the bible it says that there are no other planets in the universe or any other galaxy that have life on so if there is aliens then were all screwed cause theres no heaven either

[georgit79]

I was being silly. Glad someone picked up on it though...nobody ever gets it when I'm being sarcastic.

[georgit79]

and thanks, mfewell, for introducing me to a new word- I've never been called an acolyte before...

although in this case I think it's your turn to be sarcastic, n'est-ce pas?

[jimmer]

Badams/clanad

Sorry for calling you brainwashed. I'm not sure how that makes me a nazi but c'est la vie i'm going to turn the other cheek. There is an overwhelming certainty to evolution, so much so that we can say it's 100 per cent true that we evolved: Germs become resistant to drugs, E-coli becomes tolerant to different sugars and periods of starvation and Andean Indians have big chests. Why is it that many Black Africans have the Sickle-cell haemoglobin gene while no swedes do? its because malaria is a tropical disease. and on and on and on. The roman catholic church - not an organisation i usually turn to in support of my arguments - accepts it as a fact. why are you so scared of it?



jimmer

[nedflanders]

They are scared cos it disproves the fable that god created the earth in six day and took a sickie for the last one.

[MargeB]

ok, you christian guys and gals have an opportunity now to tell us how it all happened, from your point of view. Let's here it. The whole shebang. How are we here, what happened, how was the world created, who is Jesus, what is the gospel, what's true in the bible, what can we know, what can we not know. Let's hear it.

[georgit79]

hey. MargeB. I can stop pining now.

[Clanad]

Hold on a minute!  What do you mean by evolution?  No one argues that there can be change over time in response to environmental factors.  What is entirely arguable though, is speciation.  There exist not one single case of uncontested speciation. The drug resitant germs are still germs, Andean Indians at high altitudes are still humans.  Where does this match the Darwinian expanation of speciation?  As I ahve pointed out previously, near ad infinitum (or ad nauseum, as the case may be) when naturalists mention evolution, one thing is meant, when creationists mention the subject, yet another thing is meant.

In the past few years, extensive experiments involving radiation of multiple generations of fruit flies were conducted.  Fruit flies are ideal for evolutionary experiments since the have such short generational spans.  The experiments equaled 1 million years of human generation, yet no new species of fruit flies or any other insects were generated!  Almost all of the flies that survived the radiation produced, initially, deformed and non-surviving off spring, yet within a few more generations the offspring had returned to normal offspring.  Understand, it's not my questioning of evolution as expected and predicted by Darwin, it's the scientific community. 

Contd.

[Clanad]

Have any of you ever actually read Darwin? Especailly his second edition? At any rate...Stephen J. Gould, the famous (recently deceased) anthropolgist recognized the non-viability of the theory and proposed an alternative to achieve the same desired results... Punctuated Equilibrium.  Seems he believed evolution didn't proceed at a slow, stately gait, as Darwin, et al prescribed, so Gould, et al, said it happened so suddenly that observers couldn't see it in the fossil record.  An egg laying dinosaur suddenly laid an egg producing the first bird... didn't take long for someone pointed out the fallacy... what would this new bird mate with to produce further examples?

And, why do naturalists/atheists believe those who don't buy into the non-viable theory think we fear it.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but it does appear that you would like all the naysayers (and they are legion) to just go away... I have as much right to draw conclusions from the evidence as you do to ignore the evidence...

[MargeB]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part4

[MargeB]

Say we did accept that speciation didn't occur (I don't). What gave rise to all the families of different animals? How did all of this come about?

[georgit79]

can't get that link.

[MargeB]

I think it can be reached through here (some interesting reading):

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html

Paul

[georgit79]

thanks- i'll try and comment on this a bit later (when I've finished checking faulty locks- it's all go here today!)

Georgina

[jimmer]

clanad

ok so you accept "natural selection", changes in physiology due to localised breading groups. Do you accept/reject mutations in plants such as enothera? suppose that localised breading ended in a subspecies that got cut a drift from the main group and continued on its own evolutionary path.

Speciation is shown through experiments including some on the fruit fly (albeit not dramatically) . I can accept that there is a long way to go before we can pop new species up left right and centre but i think its a bit disingenuous for you to expect this to happen over night when it took millions of years of evolution and a great many converging environmental circumstances for it to happen in the first place. We are not even a smudge on the footnotes of time so it may take a few more weeks before our boffins crack the code. One thing i do know is that the sun is the centre of our solar system and the world is round ( i couldn't prove it mind). I know i stick to the earth due to gravity ( can't prove it) and i know that bees make the buzzing sound by breathing through their bodies ( to painful to prove). And i know that science keeps on getting better. Do you believe that a person can be possessed by an evil spirit?

Returning to my new friends the catholic church i see that although they say the soul must have been provided separately by god at the time it happened, it is not beyond reason that we did evolve from apes. Now that is refreshingly open minded

[georgit79]

phew! that took a while. Especially since first I had to check I was right about what speciation actually is. Only did Science up to GCSE, I'm afraid. Went all arty after that...

So who's arguing what?

[deggers]

All you need to do is look at the how close both god and aliens are. Have you ever thought that they could be the same thing? What is god was an alien ?

[Clanad]

Well, jimmer, help me here... I'm having a difficult time deciphering exactly what you mean by speciation.  You give a few examples of different types of speciation accepted at one time or another by one group of academecians or another but don't explain what your decision is.  As I'm sure you know, the most generally accepted mode of speciation, one that has been en vogue for the longest period of time is the Biological Species Concept. Employing Occam's Razor, the selection (pun only slightly intended) of choice appears to be the one originated about 1930 by Du Rietz, et al , which, simply put defines a species as a reproductive community. So...can we agree on that, or do you wish to employ one of at least three other definitions?

[Clanad]

Addendum...

I'm not avoiding your query, but I need to understand your terms... (localised breading groups?).  Perhaps if we can agree on definitions, especially a foundational defining of species,  a fruitful discussion can ensue...

[Clanad]

... And, jimmers, while were at it... how many millions of years are sufficient?  would you accept 50 or perhaps 250 million years to be adequate to bring forth new species, much less phyla?  Just wondering... thanx...

[MargeB]

Usual stuff, georgi. The creationists are secretly cowering in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Check out the skulls on this page. Now someone tell me we ain't from lesser apes.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex3